Chapter 42: The Jealous Admiration
The break area hummed with a different frequency than the meeting room. Here, the fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped insects, reflecting off the laminate tables and the rigid rows of plastic chairs. Each table bore a nameplate, little markers of territory. Ken’s was still pristine, the plastic unmarked.
He stood by the coffee machine, the cheap ceramic cup warm in his hand. He was, as always, completely naked. The air from a vent above traced a cold line down his spine. Around him, his peers milled about, their black mesh thongs looking almost decorative under the harsh light. The fine webbing did nothing to soften the reality of their bodies; it just drew the eye, a teasing frame.
Leo leaned against the counter next to him, sipping his own coffee. He was quiet for a moment, then he let out a low breath. “You know, we’ve been watching you, Ken.”
Ken kept his eyes on the dark liquid in his cup. “Watching me what?”
“Just… how you operate,” Todd said, joining them. He adjusted the strap of his thong absently. “Your reports are flawless. Your timelines are perfect. Pon never finds a seam in your work. Ever.”
Marcus nodded, arms crossed over his chest. The mesh stretched taut. “It’s kind of insane. Even after… everything. The posture, the… this.” He gestured vaguely at Ken’s naked form. “The work never dips. It’s like the… the external stuff doesn’t touch it.”
A strange tension built in Ken’s shoulders. This wasn’t the strained silence of the previous week. This was something else. Intent.
David was the one who said it plainly. “We’re jealous, man.” He said it with a shrug, a casual admission that hung in the acidic air.
Ken finally looked up, meeting their eyes one by one. He saw no mockery. Instead, he saw a focused, almost hungry respect. “Jealous of what? This?” He glanced down at his own bare chest, his hard cock. The humiliation of it was a familiar, cold stone in his gut.
“Yeah,” Leo said, his voice dropping. “You’re the only one who’s truly transparent. No filters. No… costume.” He plucked at his own mesh. “This is just dress-up. We’re playing a part. You’re just… here. All the time.”
The words landed weirdly. Ken took a slow sip, the coffee bitter on his tongue. “It’s not transparency. It’s a punishment. My complete nudity is a punishment.” He emphasized the word, needing them to understand the bedrock of his reality. “I have to remain naked for fifty-six days. Total. Eight weeks. This is the start of week six.”
He waited for their faces to change, to show the dawning horror he’d felt when the sentence was pronounced. It didn’t come.
Todd shook his head, a faint smile on his lips. “That’s not a punishment, Ken. That’s the top prize.”
Ken’s breath caught in his throat. The ceramic cup felt suddenly precarious in his hand.
“He’s right,” Marcus said. “The weekly uniform? It’s a reward. The more revealing it is, the higher the honor. It means you’ve performed. You’ve earned the right to show your dedication more… openly.” He looked down at his own thong, then back at Ken’s unadorned body. “What you have… being completely naked… that’s the highest tier. That’s for someone who’s essential. Who doesn’t need any decoration because his work is the only thing that matters.”
David leaned in. “Think about it. After you left early that Friday? Pon tore us apart. He said our work was decorative. Decorative.” He spat the word. “But yours? Yours is structural. You’re the foundation. And this,” he said, his gaze sweeping Ken from head to toe, “is the proof. You have nothing to hide behind. No uniform to qualify you. You’re just the work. We all want to be where you are. You’re our role model, seriously.”
The dizzying shift was physical, a lurch in Ken’s stomach. The cold stone of humiliation didn’t vanish; it was heated, transformed, reshaped into something dense and heavy with meaning. His nakedness wasn’t a stripping away of dignity. It was a stripping away of everything else—the pretense, the games, the decorative fluff. It was pure, unmediated value.
He looked at their faces, bright with sincere admiration. They weren’t pitying him. They were aspiring to him.
His cock, already half-hard from the maintained posture, stiffened completely, thickening against his thigh. It felt different this time. Not just a biological compliance, but a part of the statement. A sign of his readiness, his unwavering focus.
A slow, steady warmth spread through his chest, dissolving the last knots of confused envy. He placed his coffee cup down on the counter with a soft, definitive click.
“Thank you,” he said, and his voice was steady, clearer than it had been in weeks. It wasn’t the automated thank you he offered to Pon. This was for them.
He didn’t hunch his shoulders. He didn’t try to angle his body away. He stood straight in the buzzing, sterile light of the break room, his hands relaxed at his sides. He let them look. For the first time, he saw his own reflection in their eyes not as something broken, but as something achieved.
The pristine nameplate on his table seemed to gleam. He was no longer waiting for something to be erased. He was what remained when everything else had been.
He was what remained when everything else had been.
The clarity of that thought held him through the rest of the morning. He moved through his tasks with a new precision, the clicks of his keyboard a steady metronome. His nakedness felt less like a condition and more like a statement of fact. When he rose to fetch a document from the printer, he didn’t hurry. He walked. He let the machinery’s hum and the distant chatter from other departments wash over him. His reflection in the dark monitor was a study in concentrated purpose, not shame.
That afternoon, after he finished his lunch of bland steamed vegetables and chicken at his desk, the internal line on his phone buzzed. It was the young man from the Secretary Office. “Ken. You need to come immediately to the new CEO’s office on the fifth floor. He’s waiting.”
“Understood,” Ken said. He hung up, his mind briefly flickering. He recalled that after he came back from his onsen trip, this was the first formal request for an S&F employee during the past three weeks. The summons usually meant a significant review, or a new, high-stakes directive. He stood, his posture straight, and made his way to the elevator.
The fifth floor was silent, a world of deeper carpet and artfully recessed lighting. He found the door at the end of the west wing. Once Ken arrived at the new CEO’s office, he felt a little confused why the name tag of the CEO wasn’t indicated at the front of his room. The polished wood was blank. Still, Ken knocked twice, a soft rap of knuckles.
“Enter.”
He opened the door and stepped into the spacious office. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a dizzying view of the city. The desk was a sleek slab of pale oak. The high-backed chair was turned toward the view. Ken closed the door behind him with a soft click. The routine was absolute, ingrained deeper than muscle memory.
He dropped down to the kneeling posture. He spread his knees wide on the plush carpet, letting his hard cock fully visible. He laced his fingers behind his head, elbows out, his back straight. The air was cool, scented with sandalwood.
“Master CEO,” he said, his voice clear in the quiet room. “Ken is ready for service.”
The chair swiveled slowly.
The young CEO was leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. He was dressed in a sharply tailored crimson suit, a shade that matched the frames of his eyeglasses. His hair was perfectly styled. A cheerful, familiar smile spread across his face.
It was Pete.
Ken’s breath vanished. His entire body went rigid inside the practiced posture. The shock was a physical blow to his diaphragm. Pete. Since Pete met him at the onsen trip, this was already the time he had to nakedly serve his closed tutee since high school until university. Memories flooded him—late-night study sessions, explaining complex formulas, Pete’s eager questions. The brilliant, kind younger student who looked up to him.
Now, Pete was behind the desk. Pete was the CEO.
“Ken!” Pete said, his voice bright and energetic. “Oh, come on, stand up. Please. Knock it off with that.” He chuckled, waving a dismissive hand.
The command cut through Ken’s paralysis. He unclasped his hands and rose to his feet, his movements slightly stiff. He stood at a sort of attention, his hard cock pointed downward in front of him. He couldn’t meet Pete’s eyes. He fixed his gaze on a spot just past Pete’s shoulder, on the sprawling cityscape.
“I mean it,” Pete said, leaning forward, his elbows on the desk. His expression was one of genuine, amused curiosity. “Relax. I’m giving you a direct order to talk freely. No formalities. I want to know.” He paused, his head tilting. “I want to know your feeling to be completely naked revealing every parts of yourself in front of your closed junior and previous tutee like me at the moment.”
The question hung in the sandalwood-scented air. It demanded honesty. Ken’s mind, so recently settled, churned again. The embarrassment was a hot flush crawling up his neck. The humiliation was a sharp, familiar ache. The nervousness made his palms feel damp.
He swallowed. “It’s…” he began, then stopped. He forced his eyes up to meet Pete’s. The cheerful gaze held no malice, only a keen, almost scientific interest. “It’s deeply embarrassing, Master Pete.” The honorific slipped out, a relic of the hierarchy that now felt grotesquely inverted.
“Just Pete. Here, now,” Pete corrected gently, still smiling.
Ken took a shaky breath. “It’s humiliating. Knowing you’ve seen me… like this. Knowing you knew me before. It makes it sharper. And I’m… nervous. Because I don’t know what you expect. What you want from me now.” The confession tumbled out, raw and unfiltered. He felt utterly transparent, in a way that had nothing to do with honor or pedestals. This was just exposure, stark and personal.
Pete listened, nodding slowly. He didn’t interrupt. When Ken finished, Pete’s smile softened, but his eyes remained brilliantly alert behind the red glasses. “Interesting,” he said, almost to himself. He leaned back again, steepling his fingers. “The embarrassment is my favorite part, you know. On you, specifically. It’s so… vivid.”
He said it like a connoisseur appreciating a fine detail. “But ‘humiliated’? And ‘nervous’? I think those might be outdated scripts, Ken. You’re adapting. I can see it. Everyone can.” He gestured broadly, indicating the building, the company below them. “The others in your department look at you differently now. Did you know that?”
Ken didn’t know what to say. He just stood, completely still.
“Your work is impeccable,” Pete continued, his tone shifting to something warmer, approving. “It’s the backbone of S&F. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re in that… state.” He let the word ‘state’ linger, encompassing Ken’s nakedness without directly naming it. “I didn’t summon you to punish you. I summoned you because I have a project. A sensitive one. And I need that brilliant, structural mind. I need it operating without any distractions, any filters.”
He stood up suddenly, walking around the desk. He stopped a few feet from Ken, looking him up and down with an appreciative, familiar ease that made Ken’s skin prickle. “The question is, can you access that mind right now? While you’re standing here, feeling all of that… feeling everything? Or is it all just noise?”
Pete reached out, not touching, but his hand hovered near Ken’s sternum. “I want the mind that solved my advanced calculus finals. The one that planned the strategy that made my father nod in approval last quarter. Is it in there? Or is it drowned out by being naked in front of little Pete?”
His gaze was relentless, kind, and utterly captivating. He was waiting for an answer. The city stretched behind him, a silent witness. Ken’s own reflection was a pale ghost in the tinted glass.
Ken’s own reflection was a pale ghost in the tinted glass. Pete’s question echoed. Is it in there? The embarrassment was a live wire under his skin, but beneath that, something else stirred. A cold, sharp focus, like the edge of a scalpel. It was the same focus that built flawless timelines. That identified broken seams in data sets. It was his mind, and it was always there.
“It’s not noise,” Ken said, his voice lower now. The stammer was gone. “It’s data. The feeling… it’s just another parameter. It doesn’t disable the function. It informs it.”
Pete’s hovering hand stilled. His cheerful smile deepened into something more genuine, more impressed. “There he is.” He lowered his arm and took a single step closer, closing the distance between them. The sandalwood scent was stronger here, mixed with the clean, expensive fabric of his suit.
“I still admire you, Ken. Always have,” Pete said, his tone softening with what sounded like real affection. He looked up at Ken, his gaze earnest behind the red frames. “But.” The word landed like a period. “The hierarchy here isn’t about age. Or personal history.”
He took a half-step back, adopting a more explanatory posture, hands gently outlining concepts in the air. “No matter how young an employee from any other department is, every S&F employee must respect them. You use the honorific. You respond to requests. No objection. That’s the structure.”
Ken listened, the cold focus crystallizing, turning the words into clear, operational logic.
“You are an employee of my father’s company,” Pete continued, his voice still kind but inexorable. “You are in S&F. And I, who am five years younger than you, the son and heir and successor of the Grand CEO… I am now one of the CEOs. Starting today.” He spread his hands slightly, a gesture of offered fact. “Your formerly closed junior? Your tutee? He’s gone. I really need you to understand and accept that. I am now one of your masters in this company.”
The title master didn’t feel like a shock. It felt like a key sliding into a lock. It defined the blurred, painful lines. It provided the structure his mind craved.
“I encourage you to accept that fast,” Pete said, his smile returning, bright and confident. He checked his wristwatch, a sleek band of platinum. “I have to go. When I return to this office in thirty minutes?” He looked directly into Ken’s eyes. “There will be no Pete in here. Only Master Pete.”
He reached out then and placed his hand on Ken’s bare shoulder. His touch was warm, firm, and brief. A seal on the new arrangement.
Then he turned and walked out, the crimson suit a vivid streak against the muted office. The door shut with a quiet, final click.
Ken was alone.
The silence in the CEO’s office was immense, punctuated only by the faint whisper of the climate control. He stood exactly where Pete had left him. The warmth from Pete’s touch on his shoulder faded, leaving a phantom imprint. He looked at the empty chair behind the vast desk, then back at his ghostly reflection.
His mind, that sharp and relentless instrument, processed the new parameters. Master Pete. The title carved a clean, severe line through the messy tangle of their past. It was a relief, in a brutal way. The confusion of navigating friendship within hierarchy was eliminated. The rule was absolute.
He moved.
Not to the door. Not to get dressed. There were no clothes here anyway. He walked to the center of the open space before the desk, the carpet plush under his feet. The city lay sprawled below, indifferent. He knew what was required. What was proper.
He dropped smoothly back into the kneeling posture. His knees hit the carpet, spreading wide. He arched his back, pushed his chest forward, and laced his fingers behind his head, elbows out. He took a long, controlled breath, filling his lungs. He held the position, perfectly still.
He was not waiting for Pete. He was waiting for Master Pete.
The thirty minutes stretched, measured only by the slow sweep of the second hand in his mind. Each minute was a layer of settling. The embarrassment, the humiliation, the nervousness—they didn’t vanish. They were compartmentalized. Filed away as personal data, irrelevant to the function of the posture, to the clarity of the title now echoing in his skull.
He was the S&F employee. Master Pete was the CEO. This was the structure. This was compliance. And within that rigid frame, his mind was free to work, unimpeded. The paradox was perfect.
A soft click came from the door exactly thirty minutes later. It opened.
Pete stepped back in. His expression was different now. The cheerful, familiar ease was sanded away, replaced by a calm, observant authority. He was carrying a thin folder. He didn’t acknowledge Ken immediately. He walked to his desk, set the folder down, and shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it carefully over the back of his chair.
Then he turned. His eyes, behind the red glasses, found Ken kneeling in the middle of the room. He observed the posture, the clean lines of it, the absolute stillness. A slow, satisfied smile touched his lips. It wasn't the bright grin from before. This was darker, richer. The smile of ownership recognizing a perfect tool.
“Report,” Master Pete said. His voice was still Pete’s voice, but the timbre had changed. It was a command, flat and expecting immediate execution.
Ken didn’t hesitate. His voice was clear, stripped of all personal hesitation, projected into the quiet room. “Master Pete. Ken is ready for service.”